Two shank's mares walk into a bar

A friend dropped by briefly today. He laughed when he saw me. I thought that was odd, but didn't say anything. We concluded our business. Later I happened by a mirror and saw that my hair was sticking straight up. I looked like Don King. Or a shocked Bride of Frankenstein. Since I stopped coloring my hair (brown), it's now reverted to it's natural color (mottled grayscale). Not only is the color different than it used to be, but the texture has also changed, which accounts for its vertical tendency. There was a time when I would have killed for hair with the ability to stand up and salute. I guess it just proves the maxim that if you wait long enough, all your desires will eventually come to you.

Take climate change, for instance. Hot, is all I can say. Hot, hot, hot. I'm loving it, although I admit that I start to wilt a bit when the thermometer nears 100°, especially if I'm outside hiking from store to bus stop with a heavy sack of groceries. Oh, woe is me, I have to walk. Alas, alackaday, and all that folderol.

Speaking of odd idioms, I called my mother on the phone tonight to tell her I would like to borrow her car on Wednesday. “Shall I come pick you up?” she asked. Part of me would like nothing better than to have my mother drive over to loan me her car. Part of me thinks walking might be beneficial for my butt.

“I'll walk over,” I said.

“You'll use your shank's mare?” she said playfully.

I was like, what? My what? I'd never heard that expression before. I Googled it while we were on the phone and read some background on the term. Ha! Shank's mare! I love language. I should probably have studied English. But then I'd be unemployed. Hey, wait! ...well, whatever. I still love words.

Speaking of words, I've spent the past four days editing a train wreck of a dissertation proposal. At first pass, I despaired. I didn't think there was much hope. The structure was there, thanks to the institution's template, but the content was fractured and bent, with huge gaps (the theoretical framework is completely missing!). A plague of perplexing grammar gaffes sent my brain grasping for meaning... every paragraph had some sort of bizarre arrangement of words, kind of like those magnetic word games you seen on your friends refrigerators, where people before you have spelled out cryptic sentences like closet cats pee dark secrets. I've seen this kind of language abuse before from native English speakers who somehow absorbed just enough in high school to produce phrases like “On the same token,” and “as it relates to them being able to hit the ground running; hence being prepared.”

I am starting to develop a systematic process. First I wrestle the format into submission. If you've ever used Word styles and section breaks, you know what I'm talking about. Once I've got the styles, headings, and pagination nailed down, I generate a Table of Contents to reveal the bones and help me navigate the paper. Then I scan the paragraphs for main ideas and shuffle them around so they fall in line with the subheadings. Next, I take paragraphs apart to nudge ideas next to their buddies. And then I go word by word, semi-colon by misplaced comma by missing bracket, to wrench meaning out of each sentence. I go round and round in circles, finding statements that are repeated, or should be repeated but don't agree, shoving things hither and thither, sometimes working with the paper zoomed out to 30% so I can see two pages on the screen.

I highlight all the 4 billion instances where she should have cited a source (can we say plagiarism?). When I've combed the paper for dead commas and excessive spaces, I save the wreck as a pdf file and get down to the task of digging for meaning. I check my edits as I go—I always find errors, some of them egregious. Argh. As I work, I add comments in the margin, berating the hapless would-be scholar for thinking her feeble research question is going to pass muster with her reviewers.

Then again, she's attending an online for-profit university not unlike the one I attended, so all bets are off. Maybe her reviewers will be inexperienced and lackadaisical and wave her on through to the IRB review. Or maybe she'll get the Nazi mentor who blocks progress because of misplaced commas. I will probably eventually find out what happened: This is her proposal. If she's satisfied with my edits, she'll likely submit the dissertation. I can hardly wait.

The Chronic Malcontent succumbs to shameless commerce

Well, I did it. I've been thinking about doing it for a while (thanks to the encouragement of my sister and my friends), and I finally did it. For the past month I have been compiling posts from the Hellish Handbasket blog, in preparation for turning it into an ebook. Yep. A compendium, call it a handbook, maybe, of dissertation-related posts for aspiring doctoral learners. Yesterday, I did it. It's done. I've officially gone over to the dark side of shameless self-centered commerce.

All I've ever wanted to do, since I was nine years old, was write and illustrate my own books. Sometime during elementary school, evil powers convinced me it was an impossible dream, so I pivoted toward painting. Equally foolish pursuit, I was told. Thus, in college (the first of many attempts at higher education), I gave up painting for graphic design (or "commercial art" as it was known in the x-acto knife and rubber cement, layout and paste-up days. Wow, I'm old.)

Unfortunately, I sucked at graphic design. But I loved fashion! I used my hazy vision of taking over the fashion world as a fashion illustrator and designer as an excuse to take a geographical to Los Angeles, where I fell awkwardly into costume design, started my own business, and got into debt. The rest is the boring history of me crawling out of the various holes I dug for myself over the ensuing 20 years. But you can't take the dream out of the girl, apparently, even when she's middle-aged, sagging, and growing a mustache. All I ever really wanted to do was create my own books.

It just wasn't the right time, it seems. Until now. All it took was for the world of technology to catch up to my vision and make it possible. Yay.

Of course, the world of technology also has made it possible for millions of other would-be authors to realize their visions of publishing, too. I find I am a speck, invisible in the vast and swarming tide of people who can also proudly claim they are ebook authors. Anyone can write and publish an ebook. (Even my mother could do it, and she just might, who knows! My scrawny 84-year-old mother just relaunched her online presence! Look out, Internet!)

As part of the gigantic and vibrant marketplace of ebooks, odds of being found are not in my favor. Especially considering my ebook is (more or less) an anonymous entry. Some marketing ploys to boost awareness of the new ebook may be undesirable, if I want to stay anonymous. Am I really hidden? No...anyone who wants to find me, can. I'm not well hidden, I'm not really anonymous. Who cares? Once again I find myself questioning my identity. Who am I? Who am I now? On so many levels, I'm still so confused.

But I finally got something done! Something is now present in the world that wasn't present before, and I was responsible for making that happen. That is the victory for me. If the universe wants to take note of it, so be it. If not, whatever. I'm on to my next ebook. My car may have a layer of moss on it, for being parked in the same spot for so long. But not me!

If you are interested in ordering or sampling the ebook, you can find it at Smashwords. And if you want more info, check out the Welcome to Dissertation Hell: the ebook page on this blog.

Plagued by monkey mind

As my friend in Minneapolis once said, “On a good day, my mind is trying to kill me.” She's speaking of her own mind, but the phrase seems to apply to me this week, too. How do I know? Because my brain is trying to convince me that I didn't actually earn a Ph.D. My brain is trying to tell me that the whole thing—the academic achievement I spent the last eight years of my life working toward—was a colossal... dream? mistake? fantasy? That it never really happened. Poof.

This is bordering on insanity, I know. How can I doubt my achievement? I have witnesses. If reality can be known and understood at all (debatable), I think (most) people I know would (mostly) be willing to accept as reality the fact that after all those years, I finally finished the damn doctorate.

It's not the first time my mind has played this trick on me. One time I got an A-plus on a paper. Within moments I had convinced myself that it wasn't true. It wasn't really an A-plus, my eyes are failing me. Or, it wasn't really me at all, it was someone else, probably that smart blonde girl in the second row, who earned that A-plus. Or, it was a silly grading error; after all, the TA is an imbecile; soon they will discover the truth: It wasn't me. I'm a fraud.

I think this mental condition is related to the Buddhist concept of monkey mind. Sadly, my particular brand of monkey mind leans more toward confusion, indecision, and lack of control, and less toward whimsy, which is too bad, because appreciating whimsy can be pleasurable. On the plus side, monkey mind comes with entertaining visuals: I picture a line of badly dressed flea-infested monkeys wearing tattered red fezzes, dancing on my shoulder and clashing little brass cymbals, right in my ear. Youch. If they weren't so darn noisy, they might actually be funny.

When the monkeys in my mind start dancing and clashing their cymbals, it means my brain is trying to rewrite history. What is my solution to monkey mind? Nap. My solution is to take a nap. Or a bath, or read a book, preferably while taking a bath. And not just any book, but something that takes me far, far away from monkey mind. My current remedy is the old standby, the Otherworld tetralogy by Tad Williams. Each paperback weighs a pound, a thousand pages of virtual reality immersion, and after a few chapters of traveling along the River of Blue Fire, I have no idea what reality is, virtual or otherwise. It's very helpful.

After spending three years working on a phenomenological study, you would think I would be comfortable with the subjective and tenuous nature of reality. Usually I am. The monkey mind is loudest when I fall into the trap of thinking I can ever truly understand or know anything. Hey, did you think that getting a Ph.D. means a person is suddenly smart? Har har, joke's on you. Maybe a little smarter, maybe not, but stubborn, for sure. I think we can agree on that.

Is there life after doctorate?

This week I'm wrapping up the loose ends of the doctoral journey. The University wanted a pdf file and a hard copy of the dissertation. First, I took my flash drive to Office Depot and had them print one copy (plain paper, no color, 391 pages [Can you bind it? No, are you crazy, it's 391 pages! That will be $31.28]). As I leafed through the massive wretched tome, I noticed the images of the rich pictures looked like blurry crap. Argh. At home I opened up the Word file and tried to sharpen and color correct the images to reduce the blur. It sort of worked, poor man's Photoshop, lame tools in Word. My challenge was to minimize the file size but maximize image quality... sort of like eating a gallon of ice cream and hoping I will still fit in my jeans. Whatever. I reprinted all the color pages using my own old leaky inkjet printer, inserted the new pages, and stuffed the whole thing in a box. The next day I went to the post office, bought a money order for $160 (I'm choosing Open Access, so anyone could potentially find it, should they choose to search on something so esoteric as academic quality in for-profit vocational programs), put it in the box with my Proquest order form, and shipped it off to the University. (Picture me wiping my hands.) Done. Stick a fork in me again, this time, it's really done. As long as I didn't get the pages out of order, or accidentally skip some pages, or fill in the form wrong, or put the wrong amount on the money order, or mail it to the wrong address...

Today I celebrated my new life as a Ph.D. by applying for an adjunct teaching position at a clone of the college that fired my compadres and me last May. No, not fired, we weren't fired. Laid off, is what we were, laid off when the campus closed. No fault of our own. Repeat after me. It's not a moral failing to be laid off from a job, although it sometimes feels like it.

The job I applied for today was for an adjunct Business instructor, three years of experience required. As I read the online application process, I realized they didn't want the cover letter I had so painstakingly taken time to customize just for them. How times have changed. They wanted the resume, but only as a means to fill in the online registration form. Nowadays, it's all about online tests. Before you can apply, you must take a battery of tests. Tests? Really? Just to apply?

Yep. The first one was a 10-minute timed test of math, logic, and vocabulary questions, all mixed together. As I looked at the practice page, I could feel my heart rate start to soar, my typical response to being timed or tested. Being both timed and tested launched me into overdrive. My hands began to shake. My mouth suddenly grew parched. Do I want this stupid adjunct job badly enough to go through this torture?

I took it one question at a time and soon began to realize that whatever capacity for logic my brain used to have must have been beaten out of me over the past eight years of doctoral drudgery. Here's a series of numbers; which one comes next? 15  32  486  2587 24. Hell, I don't know. Ask me another. Okay, a monkey is to manager as a centipede is to a _________ ? Oh, come on. Really?

I'm exaggerating. They didn't really ask those questions, but they asked ones similarly as incomprehensible to me and my tiny tired brain. But that wasn't even the best part. (Best, meaning, worth mentioning.) After ten minutes of this electronic waterboarding, I was allowed to move on to the next section: 12 pages (12, I kid you not!) of psychological questions about my working style, personality, attitudes, and beliefs, which I was to answer using a five-point scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Oh boy, Myers Briggs meets the DISC Assessment! I can do this. I'm the survey queen, after all!

I answered the questions honestly, all 12 pages. What could I do? There were so many similar and repeated questions, they were bound to trip up any carefully devised strategy within three pages. You know what I mean? Hey, wait, I know I've answered that question before, but I forgot how I answered it! Darn it! So I answered honestly. They will no doubt find out I'm an introverted (but highly educated) wackjob clinging to a tiny shred of optimism, nursing a slight mean streak, and presenting vast unplumbed depths of depression, probably due to an inability to manage and control outcomes. Har har har. Story of my life.

In the meantime, I'm still scanning family photos, a hundred or so a night for the past week. It's tedious work, but I am noticing a remarkable byproduct: I'm falling in love with my family. Near and far, alive and dead, I'm savoring the images of the people who inhabited my childhood. I've discovered the holidays are the perfect time to look at old photos. I don't care about Christmas and any of that hoopla; I do care about the people I've known in my life. Could be the season, could be the below-freezing temperatures, could be the completion of the long dark doctorate. Whatever it is, I'm feeling sentimental. I'm missing my sister, missing our dead father, missing the old calico cat, the decrepit farmhouse, the overgrown yard, the funky furniture covered with gaudy hand-made afghans... I'm not judging. I'm appreciating. I'm appreciating the good stuff and forgiving the bad stuff. I may be a party of one, self-unemployed, chronically malcontented... but tonight I'm celebrating.

Stick a fork in me

This morning I successfully defended my dissertation.

Sorry. I'm trying to figure out what to write next. Do I mention that my good friend and former colleague Sheryl braved 19° temps to sit with me, serve as my proctor, and be my only witness? Do I tell you how it went, how nervous I was, how I stumbled over my words? Should I tell you that my cell phone beeped during my presentation as it received a texted photo of my brother's girlfriend's old black dog, holding up a hand-written sign that read, “Good luck, Carol!”? Should I try to identify what I felt after it was over (a wintry mix of relief and nausea), or should I talk about how I am now? (Post-dissertation blues, already?) Should I even mention how my brain is already trying to rewrite history in a bizarre attempt to convince me that none of this happened? No, best not, perhaps.

After Sheryl left, I called my mother. Her line was busy. I called my brother: He wasn't home. In desperation, I emailed my sister, my most trusted advisor: Bless her heart, she called within minutes from her job in Boston. Finally. Someone to help me understand what I was feeling.

“Do you have any plans to see people next week?” she asked.

I looked at my calendar. Does taking my car in for an oil change count? “No,”I replied.

“You need to stay connected,” she said. Hmm. Is there a high suicide rate among new Ph.D.s?

I promised to make plans to do something with people. She said, “Congratulations, Dr. B.”

“Thanks, Dr. B.” I replied with a smirk.

I emailed a few people, ate breakfast, and went to bed, too saturated and weary to stay awake any longer. I dreamed of burned onions. (19° outside means no windows open in the Love Shack.) Finally I couldn't stand the smell and got up to find a smattering of congratulatory emails in my inbox. That was nice. My mother called. We talked about her condo board meeting.

I stood around for a while, looking at things. I cleaned out the drawer I had devoted to academic files for the past eight years. I cleaned up my desk. I filed papers I want to keep, for what, I'm not sure. As I stacked paper and filled the recycle bin, the phrase eight years kept rolling around in my head. Eight years, $50,000. Now what? What's next? Who am I, if I'm no longer a struggling grad student? Who am I if I can no longer complain about the wretched massive tome, or the timeline, or the waiting?

It's time to reinvent myself. I'll give it a few days, though, before I tackle that challenge. I need more sleep.
 

Cold remembrances of someone else's past

Self-imposed house arrest, in limbo, waiting for Monday, oral defense day. I made it to the store today, yay me. I had to go; I was out of eggs. Can't live without eggs. It's cold. The temperature almost made it above freezing, but I'm not going to complain: Minneapolis barely made it to 8° before the mercury plunged back down to 5° above. 20° I can handle; 8° would drive me under the covers. After a long hot bath.

While I wait for the waiting to be over, I am building shelves. As if I didn't have enough shelves already, you would no doubt say, if you've ever been lucky enough to see my place: The walls are papered with homemade wooden book shelves, which sag under the weight of books, binders, and more books. Most of the shelves are full. But you can never have too many shelves. The simple wooden shelves I build now will receive my journals as I continue to fill the pages and discard them, one per month, year after year since 1995. The boring story of my life, literally. It takes up a lot of space. Physically and otherwise.

And while I wait for the loden green latex to dry, I scan old family photos. I have only myself to blame. My mother wanted me to look through a stack of musty photo albums one day, and I made the mistake of saying, Hey, we need to scan these! Thus, I volunteered for this self-torture. The albums sat around my worktable for a few months while I wrote the massive tome we call my dissertation. Last week I realized now would be a good time to start clearing up the clutter (considering my compulsively neat friend Sheryl is coming over to be my proctor for my oral defense). Hence, scanning.

It's a mindless, tedious task involving removing old black and white photographs from little paper corners that someone painstakingly positioned 60 to 80 years ago. The album pages are dirty, dusty black paper, and reek of ancient cigarette smoke. It's fairly gross work. While I place five or six images on the scanner bed, I can see if someone wrote something on the back. Sometimes there are useful comments: Ray, Ruth, and me. (Me is my mother.) There are many pictures of my mother and her brother as children, fewer of them as teenagers, and hardly any of them as adults. I'm guessing by then my mother was the one behind the camera. My uncle was behind a glass of wine.

Other annotations were less helpful: This is a picture of the loading dock. Where, Grandpa? When? My mother's father was a sailor and then a longshoreman, first in San Francisco and then in Portland. I didn't know him well, although I could have if I hadn't been so nervous around him. As a very young man, he sailed on the Moshulu, a merchant sailing ship that went from the States to Australia and the Philippines. Some of the photos are obviously taken from the rigging, looking down on decks awash with ocean. Yikes. Now the Moshulu is refitted with fake masts and sails, serving as a restaurant in Philadelphia. And Grandpa is long gone.

Looking at all these photos of people I barely knew or didn't know at all, most of them dead now, makes me feel a little sad. It's a year-end kind of sadness, the sadness you get when it's garden-to-bed time, when it's fleece hat, electric blanket, and rice-filled foot-warmer time. Every summer there is a moment when I stop what I'm doing and think about how I will be feeling in six months, when I'm bundled in cat hair-covered fleece. When the electric baseboard heater is clicking and clacking as it churns out warm (ish) air. When I don't go outside for three days in a row and only then to refill the bird feeder and break the ice on the bird bath. Every summer I drag my feet on the paths of Mt Tabor, hoping I can make summer last a little longer, trying to postpone the horrible moment when there are more leaves underfoot than overhead. Time passes so quickly. Even though this week seems endless, next week will speed by, and the week after that, until all that is left of me and everything and everyone I love is a bunch of old photos in a stinky photo album.

The chronic malcontent supports Buy Nothing Day

As I count down the days to my oral defense, I have done my best to take each day as it comes, free from expectations and judgment. That Zen-like approach does not come naturally to me, as you might imagine, considering I sometimes call myself a chronic malcontent. Malcontents have lots of expectations, which means when things don't go their way, which is often since that is how life is, they end of with a buttload of judgment. This week I found myself whining about all sorts of things... Christmas, waiting, weather...

I know, really? Weather? It's the height of ego to take weather personally, I know, but I still do it. I don't want to look outside, because it is probably snowing. Ugh. Snow. Still, knowing me, I would find a reason to complain about something, even if it were 85° and sunny. That's what malcontents do. We complain. Unfortunately, incessant complaining has consequences, as I discovered this week when I caved to the urge to spew my vitriolic viewpoint over my hapless friend Bravadita.

We ate pizza at a tiny pizza/pasta joint in SE Portland. I added coffee to my meal, because I knew wheat and dairy wouldn't quite be enough to send me over the top into utter mania. As I tried not to moan with indecent pleasure at the rare taste and feel of cheesy pizza in my mouth, I felt the urge to express myself. And because both Bravadita and I are frustrated creative souls stymied by forces beyond our control (our perception), that is of course what I focused on: my frustration. I'm not sure I knew what I was frustrated about, but it was something to do with art, writing, dating, unemployment, body image, poverty, and Christmas.

Looking back on it now, I would guess my frustration was fueled by the endless waiting for my doctorate to be over and the overwhelming terror of what comes after, peppered with fallout from a conversation I had with my sister about why I always wear clothes that hide my less-than-svelte figure. The spark that set off the conflagration was the time I spent the day before scanning dusty slides of wearable art projects, paintings, and fashion illustrations from my former lives as a painter, illustrator, and costume designer. (So much creativity. So much crappy art.) Stir all that into a big a potful of fear that I've spent eight years and $50,000 on a doctorate from a less-than-stellar university and what do you get? A big steaming pile of frustration.

Then Bravadita tentatively offered up her own dark frustrations, no doubt in a futile attempt to make me feel better, and suddenly I felt like marching on Washington in protest against the injustice of a society that judges women by the size of their ass. How can it be possible for one so gorgeous and talented to be so miserable? It defies logic and reason! But wait, am I talking about Bravadita, or am I talking about myself? Oh, I'm so frustrated and confused! And then, insult to injury: It's Christmas! That horrid music is everywhere! And did I mention plummeting temperatures! I'm using too many exclamation points!

I know what you are thinking: It's a wonder I'm even functioning. However, lest you fear for my sanity (Sis), truly, no worries. I've got a program to help me get through the holiday season. My strategy is this: Lay low, drink water, blog, and buy nothing. And when I lose my sense of direction, I will bury my face in cat fur. It's all good at the Love Shack.

After the pizza dinner, Bravadita and I walked across the street to the Clinton Street Theater, an old somewhat crusty neighborhood theater that boasts the longest running midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show in the nation (Who knew! [Who cares?]). We weren't there to see that. We were there to see opening night of Monkey With a Hat On's production of The Noir 10-Minute Play Festival. Ten slightly bizarre, sometimes funny vignettes that were presumably created to represent the concept of noir. Not surprisingly, there were many seedy PIs in trench coats. But there were also some quirky stories: a moment in the life of a suicidal family of ghosts, a sci-fi intrigue complete with a silver-faced female robot, and a depiction of a finishing school for call girls. Between each vignette was a unique musician playing piano or guitar or drum machine or muted trumpet. I think I liked the musicians better than the plays, except for the last vignette, which featured singing, dancing FBI agents. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that dancing FBI agents is exactly what I needed to help me get through this wretched holiday season. Thanks, Bravadita!

Zen and the art of waiting

I'm becoming a master at waiting. Over the past six months, I've had a lot of practice, what with the starts and stops of the dissertation process. Collect some data, then wait. Collect a little more data, fret, fume, and wait. Submit a draft, and wait. Submit another draft, and then wait some more. Then suddenly... approval! A fleeting moment of triumph and relief. Then schedule the oral defense, and wait. That's where we are now, waiting for the oral defense. Last I heard, it was on for December 9.

I think I can learn something from all this waiting. The state of waiting implies that I have little power to precipitate the condition I am waiting for. I mean, I would like the oral defense to be tomorrow. But I don't have the power to make that happen. No one likes to feel powerless, am I right? We like to think we are in control, of our own lives, at least. The metaphysics of powerlessness are paradoxical: Sometimes we have to give up our illusion of control in order to gain true independence. That's so Zen, isn't it? Ommmm. I'm pretty sure I'm not there yet. My response to all this enforced waiting is to simply curl up in a ball and endure.

Speaking of enduring, today I took my mother to the mall. She wanted to buy some books for the grandchild, who will achieve his first birthday in January. The mall was sparsely populated with customers, being the week before Thanksgiving, but crowded with young and rabid salespeople. They are relentless at that age! Was I ever like that? Infused with maniacal energy and indefatigable persistence? I don't remember all that much of my 20s, but I don't think I was ever that confident or determined, not then or since, now that I think about it. I think I've been waiting for something. But I digress.

After purchasing three Doctor Seuss books, we exited the last bookstore chain that hasn't succumbed to Wal-Mart and meandered down the mall. This is the same mall where last December a shooter killed two people and wounded a third before killing himself. As we passed by Santa, holding a tense little boy captive on his lap, I didn't think about the shooting. I thought about how slowly my mother walks now, two years after her hip replacement and a year after breaking her pelvis in a fall down some concrete stairs.

“Would you like to sample some tea?” I froze. Then I scanned the landscape warily for the origin of the voice. Drat! A salesperson! For a moment, I thought I heard the baying of wolves, just over the hill and closing fast. You know if you hesitate for the slightest moment, you are a goner. Unfortunately, I hesitated, and my doom was upon me. The young salesperson exerted his will and lured me in. (Mom, go for help!) He led me over to two huge containers, apparently filled with two kinds of tea. He filled a dinky plastic cup and held it out to me. Automatically, I took it and sipped. Fruit flavors! (Chemical aftertaste?) Sweet! (Too sweet!) Brain overload.

He was young, a little pimply, skinny to the point of starvation. “Now try this one!” I obeyed. Cinnamon, vanilla, (fake!) sweet... (oh, no, did I just imbibe some sugar?) I felt like I'd taken the bait and lost my soul. Walk away! Walk away while you still can! Too late. Give my books to the Library Foundation! Oh, Rosebud.

I looked around at all the tea paraphernalia, arranged carefully, perfectly, antiseptically... artificially. Everything was too clean, too perfect, not at all appealing to me. Where's the colorful teapots, the big glass bins of delicious loose teas, made with organic ingredients? The realization that I'd just tasted temptation from a minion of satan swept over me. Suddenly I heard my mother's gravelly voice say, “I'm a coffee drinker,” and reason returned. Hey, I'm a coffee drinker now, too. Ever since self-unemployment, the more robust the better. Tea is for wimps!

“It's very tasty, very sweet,” I began, attempting to reassure the kid.

“It does have a little rock sugar,” he admitted.

I headed for the door, my mother in tow. “Enough of that,” I said, wishing I had a big cup of French roast right then, so I could swill some and breathe the bitter fumes back in his face. He thrust a brochure at me in desperation, but we were gone.

We paused to regroup in front of Macy's. “Let's go back to the car,” she said. We hadn't made it halfway to Sears. We both agreed that there was something about aimless mall walking that really sapped one's will to live. We slowly wended our way back to the parking lot. The sun was still shining. It must have been 50°, so strange for late November.

“What will you do with the rest of your day?” she asked when we got back to her condo.

I said I would like to take a walk in the park, but actually, I was feeling a little dizzy, no doubt from swallowing the two little sips of chemical-laced, sugar-infested artificially flavored beverage masquerading as tea. By the time I got home I had a mildly sickening headache, which I cured with ibuprofen and a nap. And some coffee.

I spend my days waiting. Waiting to feel better. Waiting for my mother to trip over a curb or fall down some stairs. Waiting for the dissertation committee to say, oh sorry, we can't make it on December 9, we'll have to reschedule for January. I've spent my life waiting, mostly dreading bad things that never happen, or being so unconscious and distracted that I don't notice when good things happen. I have the uneasy feeling that I'm rehearsing for the real thing, the life that will soon be coming, if I just wait long enough.

How do you know when you're in the flow?

A few days ago I was contemplating the nature of flow. I refer to a state of being where one is so absorbed in an activity that one loses all track of time. If you are a writer or an artist, you know what I mean. But anyone can experience flow. For example, I'm sure my mother is experiencing flow when she plays Castle Camelot.

I often read a book entitled Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I keep it in my bathroom. It shares a shelf with Smooth Move, Trickle Down Theory, and Evacuate! (I'm kidding. Really. Do such books exist? If not, they should.) I've read Flow before, some years ago. Now I am re-reading it, a paragraph or two at a go, so I really have time to ponder the quality of time and the nature of experience.

I wonder, is it better to engage in some engrossing activity—reading, writing, or painting, for instance—oblivious to the passage of time, surfacing in surprise from your bliss hours later, wondering where the day went? Or is it better to be painfully present to the excruciatingly slow passage of time and thereby retain consciousness of every precious second by engaging in some task that you despise—for example, teaching keyboarding to uninterested students? It's a rhetorical question. But think about it. Would you rather be conscious and miserable, or unconscious and happy? Maybe consciousness is over-rated. (Although paychecks are useful, I must admit.)

Today I received approval for my dissertation manuscript. I emailed my sister and attached the slides for my oral defense. She called tonight to congratulate me; I did my best to hold still and hear the praise. She asked for some PowerPoint tips, so I guess she liked the slide show. I'm glad. She and my mother have been my faithful cheerleaders through this entire eight-year journey. It seems a paltry gift to simply name them on my Acknowledgements page, but that's what they are getting for Christmas.

In just over two weeks, I will present my oral defense via telephone conference call, with my stalwart friend and former colleague Sheryl acting as my proctor. She will sit on my couch amid the dust bunnies and hairballs and be my witness as I read my prepared script to an unseen audience. My Chair and the Nameless, Faceless Committee Member will ask me some questions—If you were to do your study over, what would you do differently? How do you think your recommendations could be implemented? What research will you do next? What was the most difficult part of the process? What words of advice would you give to a Ph.D. candidate just starting her first DIS course?—and I will try to answer the questions briefly and succinctly with a minimum of um's. Then my Chair will say, “Okay, Carol, now you will drop off the call while we confer. Call back in five minutes.”

Assuming I enter the right passcode and am shunted into the correct conference call, I will announce myself. Then she will either say, “Congratulations Dr. Carol,” or she will say, “No soup for you! One year!” No, I'm kidding. Ha ha. No, at this point, it's unlikely she will say anything but nice job, Doctor So-and-So, congratulations, upload your final manuscript, so long, thanks for the $50,000, have fun talking to the Registrar, bye now.

Finishing this Ph.D. is going to open up a massive void in my life. The thought of what comes next is paralyzing. Maybe it won't be so bad, though. While I waited for approval for my dissertation, I had a fun little research project for the past week, thanks to a friend's recommendation, analyzing the results of a quantitative survey for a large manufacturing company. It's a different world than academe, that's for sure. Commercial research is less rigorous in some ways than academic research, but you've got all those client demands and interactions. It's the business world, after all: They are the customer, I'm the vendor. I uploaded the files by the promised delivery date, and that was the last I heard. I don't even know if they believe they got what they asked for. I know they got more than they paid for (assuming they eventually pay me). Still, it was a wonderful four days, during which I spent considerable time in flow, oblivious to everything but the task before me.

I need more work like this. Even though the days will pass more quickly, I will be happily unconscious. That is all I ever wanted, anyway, a relief from consciousness. If I can get paid to check out, what more could a chronically malcontented misfit ask for?

Calculating how many degrees of freedom I will have after I finish my doctorate

While I wait to hear if my dissertation manuscript has been approved, I am relearning statistics. It's either that or crossword puzzles. I am adept at running statistical tests in Excel—any trained monkey can do that, once it figures out that installing the Data Analysis Toolpack results in beaucoup bananas. I can compare the scores of two groups to see if perhaps their differences are due to the random chance we all face as we flit about our day, or due to the fact that they are in fact really different in some significant way. Like they root for rival soccer teams or something, I don't know, I'm just making this up. Click the button, whoosh, Excel performs its magic, and voilá, you have output! It's like a statistical meat grinder. Of course, like a meat grinder, what you get out of it depends a lot on what you put into it. I didn't collect this data, so I have to accept what I have. (Have you noticed that I've used two French words in one paragraph? Zut alors!)

Today I discovered the equation that calculates the degrees of freedom needed to conduct a t-test on two independent samples. (No, I don't mean I discovered the equation. I mean I figured out how to type it into Excel. I feel like I imagine Columbus felt when he discovered India, that is to say, like an ignoramus.)

There are so many ways to go with this topic, it's hard to pick just one. Like, are you wondering what degrees of freedom are? Tantalizing, isn't it? We like freedom, it's one of our national values, although it hasn't always been applied fairly, but still, we live and die for it, so it must mean something to us, freedom. Degrees of it sounds a little uncertain, but we can always use more freedom, right? Can there ever be too much freedom? Hmmm. Ask any kid who doesn't get a lot of parental attention. Maybe too much of a good thing, like eating ten maple bars when one or two would do? Food for thought.)

The degrees of freedom I'm talking about actually have to do with calculating a specific statistical test to see if two independently collected samples are significantly different from one another. Does that sound like a foreign language to you? Mais non, if you are a statistician, which I'm not. I love statistics, but no matter how many times I study statistics, I can barely grasp the concepts before they slip away. Like anything to do with numbers, statistical concepts just don't stick in my brain, and the older I get, the less they stick, along with phone numbers, birthdays, and what I had for lunch yesterday. It's like my brain is hardening into a slick marble ball. I look on the bright side: When I'm dead, the morgue attendants can go bowling. Miniature bowling. (Do they have such a thing?)

The statistical equation for calculating degrees of freedom in Excel, in case you were wondering, is this:

Where S1 and S2 represent the standard deviations of the two samples, respectively, and N1 and N2 are the sample sizes of the two samples. That's all you need, plus a buttload of parentheses in exactly the right places. (Oh, and don't type the DF part.) No sweat. I guarantee after you type this in successfully, you will feel a strange tingling sensation that can be interpreted as a frisson of freedom. A successful outcome, by the way, will be obvious when you generate a value that is just slightly smaller than the sum of the two sample sizes. Clear signs that you have erred would include a negative number or a ridiculously high number like, oh say, 16,345.2345 when your combined sample size is 40. Ha! Logic prevails, eventually.

What, me worry?

I've been avoiding this moment for six months. This week I was broadsided with an unpleasant realization: No, it can't be! Can it be? How could this happen? I'm unemployed! Wha—? Those... those people! Those people I trusted like family (that is to say, not much) pulled up their big boy pants, put on their management hats, and decided that I was expendable, superfluous, extraneous... and they let me go (along with a bunch of other unnecessary human flotsam but this is about me, as usual). Argh. How could they? And more to the point, how come it took six months for the reality of unemployment to sink into my gasping brain? That's kind of a long lag time, don't you think? What's my excuse, you ask?

Maybe it's because I've been busy finishing my D. Phil. Or maybe it's because I've been intermittently flailing in the throes of an entrepreneurial seizure. I don't know. The warm golden days of October are long gone, and now Portland is drenched in November. Brain fog makes it hard to figure out what I'm thinking. Never a good sign.

This morning I woke up in the grimy twilight of mid-morning and found the electricity was out. I put on my glasses and peered out the window. No lights on in the cafe across the street. Hmmm. A power outage in the 'hood? I found my diminutive lime green camping lantern (no, I don't camp) and used it to look up the power company in one of my many yellow-paged phone books. According to the robot on the other end, I was the 258th caller, and two... thousand... two... hundred... and... twenty... three... customers were affected by the outage, which they estimated would be fixed by 10:30 a.m. And by the way, if I had any information about what was causing it, please stay on the line.

I found the dregs of yesterday's coffee in the bottom of my cup and savored the burned staleness, trying to stave off panic, wondering what the hell I would do with myself until the power came back on. What did people do before electricity? Uh.... read books, talk to each other, go for walks, heat water over a fire, work the fields, die of consumption... I took the lantern back to bed with a book, prepared to wait it out. Five minutes later, the bedside light came on. And that was my short-lived foray into the 18th century. I leaped out of bed and got the coffee going, feeling a little more grateful than usual for the blessings of the modern age.

I'm also feeling thankful that I don't live in a hurricane/typhoon zone. The news from the Philippines is heart-breaking. I'm not equipped to handle a disaster of any kind, natural or human-made, especially during these days when I feel so discombobulated. What a luxury problem, to be so self-obsessed. It's hard to fathom a world where huge waves sweep thousands out to sea. I live on a hill, which means I am probably safe from flooding. But I'm a sitting duck in a raging fire.

In the immortal words of Alfred E. Neuman, What, me worry? Just let me get through the next month. Then I can collapse in a quivering puddle of (unemployed) human-flavored aspic.

At last, a reason to take a moratorium on service

My brain is full of talk talk talk, but little action seems to be forthcoming. While I wait for feedback on the second draft of my dissertation, I am once again in limbo, fretting over my future and avoiding my present. Last Tuesday I visited my naturopath, Dr. Tony, for my quarterly tune-up. I never know ahead of time what diabolical new technique he will want to try out on me, but I never say no. The man saved my life, after all. Four years ago, I was slowly dying of self-imposed malnutrition. He diagnosed me, prescribed clean food and lots of water, and cheerfully signed me up for the maintenance plan. I see him every few months, and he finds in me a willing victim for his latest wacky techniques.

Maybe there should be an annual limit to how much self-improvement doctors can attempt. Every time Dr. Tony attends a class or seminar, he seems overly eager to practice his new knowledge. I presume he is practicing on everyone else, too, not just me. That would be too weird if he said, Oh boy, I can't wait until Carol comes in again, so I can try out my new vertebrae-adjusting gun on her!

Today Dr. Tony looked natty in his white jacket. As soon as the examining room door was closed, he said, “I just took a class on Total Body Modification!” rubbing his hands together with obvious glee.

I grimaced at him. I wasn't feeling particularly perky that morning, what with the low clouds and rain, the piles of mushy wet leaves, and the prospect of spending money I could not afford to spend. He looked so happy. I lay on my back on his table, peering up at his grinning face, and resigned myself to my fate. Another payment on your student loan, dude. He laid a flimsy notebook on my stomach. Then he reached for my arm. I raised it automatically—by now I am a well-trained patient—so he could muscle-test me. He eagerly flipped through the pages of the notebook while pushing on my upraised arm.

“Oh, wow,” he said with excitement. He paused. “Wait, I have to look this up.” He grabbed a heavy book off the little table under the window and paged through it. Then he bent down and grabbed something small from a bag on the floor. He held up what looked like a dinky white test tube. I couldn't see what was in it, if anything, nor what was written on the label. “This little tube contains magnetically charged bla bla that will resonate with your bla bla bla, so we can clear away the bla bla bla. Bladdity bla bla. Hold this right here.”

He handed me the tiny white vial and told me to press it to my chest. I did. He tapped my leg above the knee and I obediently raised it. “Push back.” I pushed against his hand, and my leg weakened and fell to the table. He grinned like a maniac. “See, that blows out. Okay, now sit up. I'm going to adjust the bla bla on your back. Now let me see which ones...” He turned to the book again, musing out loud. “Four, eight, and... ten.” Then he took his little silver gun and pressed the trigger against certain bones in my spine, telling me to breathe in and out.

When I laid back down on the table, still holding the vial against my chest, he tested my leg again. This time I could hold it against the pressure of his hand. Muscle-testing is weird.

“So, what that was, that was the Zeta Virus,” he informed me. “This is to clear you of suicidal ideation.”

I must have looked skeptical. “This is for people who aren't necessarily planning on committing suicide,” he reassured me. “But sometimes they find themselves driving along a road, crossing a bridge, and they wonder what it would be like, what would happen, if they suddenly were to turn the wheel...you know?”

He didn't come right out and ask me if I had entertained such morbid fantasies, but I got his drift. Well, who hasn't, that's what I want to know. I mean, don't we all, aren't we all sometimes drawn to imagine our deaths? It doesn't mean we necessarily want to die, but don't you wonder? No? Well, maybe it's not everyone. Anyway, I've been cleared of the Zeta virus now, so I don't have to obsess for a while about driving my car off a bridge. I wonder how long this cure will last? I forgot to ask.

Oddly enough, as I lay back down on the table, I felt a warm tingly feeling in my torso.

“Your eyes are brighter already,” he said rather smugly. I felt like smiling, suddenly, so I did.

“The other thing that came up for you is bla bla bla,” Dr. Tony said. He looked sidelong at me. “This is for people who do too much service, people who 'take one for the team,' you know what I mean?”

I could only stare at him in surprise. Service? Taking one for the team? Holy words, sacred words, bite your tongue, young man! I wouldn't be where I am today without intentionally cultivating an attitude of service. (That's a loaded statement, isn't it? Where do I think I am, exactly?) Of course, I didn't say anything out loud. He must have seen something in my face. “This is the self-sabotaging side of service,” he said. “Where you put everyone else's needs before your own. Like not putting on your own oxygen mask before you help your child with theirs.”

Another tiny vial, this time held on my rib cage, another muscle test, and another round of spinal shots from his silver gun, and I was pronounced cured of the affliction of excessive service. Wow. Who knew! My 12 Step compadres might be interested in this little trick.

Thus, in a matter of minutes I was cleared of suicidal tendencies and a penchant for self-sabotaging altruism. My lucky day. And it all happened in the space of 30 minutes. All in all, I received a relatively inexpensive cure for a dreary day's doldrums, plus lots of fodder for thought about the nature of self-destruction and self-sabotage through service. Oh, that wacky Dr. Tony. He's done it again.

Waiting again, and while I wait, I plan my oral defense

I'm waiting again. Waiting is a familiar occupation. Probably for you too, am I right? Today I am waiting for a response to the second submission of my dissertation manuscript. I'm waiting for the rain to cease. And I'm waiting for the Century Link guy to show up and repair my phone line. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Earlier today we had a fall storm, complete with torrential downpour and gusty winds. For a few minutes, it looked like a monsoon had swept over us, but it was gone quickly, a fast moving front heading off to dump snow in the mountains. I looked out the window, watching for the repair truck I'm sure will be here soon, and I saw a patch of pale blue sky. Already the air is lighter, brighter. It looks like daytime now instead of twilight. That makes me feel happier. I am a creature of the light, no doubt about it. If my laptop were functional, I would do my work in my kitchen, where I could bask in the glow of my new shop light. My plants are loving it. After only a few days of bright light, they are stretching greener leaves toward the ceiling. Forget the pathetic window that lets in the few murky rays that manage to penetrate the dense branches of the holly tree. Bring on the artificial light! (I hate that holly tree, and I don't generally hate anything, especially not trees.)

Last night my phone stopped working. No dial tone, not even on the perky lavender Trimline phone I keep for making calls when the power goes out. I tried to call myself, using my cell phone: busy signal. To the outside world, it probably looks like I've been on the phone all night. Not that anyone calls me in the middle of the night, but if they did, would they think I was... talking someone off a ledge, maybe? Or making some extra money by offering phone sex? It doesn't matter: most of the calls I get are telemarketing robo calls. They'll call back later.

I'm looking ahead now to the next doctoral hurdle, the oral defense. I may have mentioned that I attend an online university. I'm not sure attend is the correct word to describe what I do there, but whatever. Anyway, once I find out if my manuscript has been approved, I can schedule the oral defense, which happens via teleconferencing call. Some people use fancy teleconferencing software, probably through their work. I'm sure my teleconference will be of the plain wrap variety.

The oral defense requires a PowerPoint presentation. No problem, I've got that handled, being a PowerPoint wizard from early Windows days. Everyone loves to hate PowerPoint, but I've been able to make some decent money at times in my former life by designing slide shows, usually under the supervision of Macintosh/Adobe gurus who wouldn't be caught dead using a Microsoft product, especially PowerPoint. Blech! Actually, they just didn't want to admit they didn't know how to use it, and so they hired me. So, the presentation part is handled.

To go with the slide show, last night I wrote my oral defense script. I have 30 minutes to present, and if I go over, my Chair will cut me off. So I wrote it all out. No jokes, no fluff, just a straightforward description of the study. I timed it while I read it out loud: 25 minutes. I also recorded it and played it back, trying to ignore how insipid my voice sounded, while I watched the show. Next slide!

To ensure that I haven't hired a trained monkey to give my presentation for me, I must enlist the help of someone (not a relative or person with a conflict of interest) to proctor the oral defense. Some months back, I asked my former colleague (you know her as Sheryl) to proctor for me. She said yes, although she hasn't responded to my recent email reminding her of her commitment. She might actually have found a job. I may have to find another proctor.

The final consideration for the planning of the oral defense is the location. For a while I thought I would rent a meeting room at a local hotel. I planned to invite some colleagues and Sheryl the proctor, of course, and my mother. Lately, though, I've been feeling scared about money: I had to let the University siphon another $794 from my account this week to pay for what I hope will be my last one-credit course. So now I'm thinking I will just invite a few people over to the Love Shack.

If you know me, you know this is a big deal. Nobody comes to the Love Shack. This is my cave, my sanctuary, my castle, my safe house. Plus it's small. I mean, really small. A dinky off-season castle. I'd say my main room is 10 feet x 20 feet. Half of it is office (computer, printer, cat's chair, my chair, shelves, books), half is living room (cat tree, couch, TV, exercise bike, DVDs, shelves, books). The walls are covered with shelves from floor to ceiling, no lie, and whatever bare wall space there is, is covered with artwork. There is barely enough room for one human and one cat. And I think I'm going to invite seven or eight people over here for my oral defense?

I think I've got the logistics figured out. I'm not going to fret about it. Odds are no one but my mother will show up anyway, and she'll only attend if we don't schedule it during nap time. Hey, the Century Link guy is here. He's sitting in his truck, no doubt smoking a cigarette and swilling coffee, uttering affirmations between tokes to motivate him to provide that excellent customer service Century Link is so proud of. Wish him luck.

I'm back. DSL was down while he was working on the problem. It was a Century Link problem. He had to go to the box to switch the line, whatever that means. And now we have liftoff, boom, easy peasy. Now that's what I call service! Eat your heart out, Comcast.

Believe it or not, this doctorate is almost done. Really. I'm not joking this time.

For the past two years, when people asked me how my doctorate was progressing, I told them, “It's almost done. Almost done. Soon.” And when it kept not being done, month after month, people eventually stopped asking. Or paying attention when I said, “Almost done. Just about there.”

Now I can say it and mean it. Truly, the doctorate is almost done. This morning I received the recommended revisions from the Graduate School. I anticipated many: there were few. Only nine comments to address, and seven were in the Abstract. I took my time, spending several hours making the revisions, although I dedicated half the time to trolling for typos. Feeling pleasantly numb, I uploaded the final draft of the dissertation this evening. If there are any more changes required, they will be so minor as to take mere minutes. The thing really is almost done.

My Chair and I talked this morning by phone. I expected her to offer guidance on how to approach the revisions. Instead she said, “This document is yours, now. It's not mine, it's not the Graduate School's, it's yours. So how you want to address these changes is up to you.” I thought, That's so nice. And then I thought, So if there is anything wrong with this dissertation now, it's on me, not my mentors, not the school. Right. Okay, no problem. I can own it.

I'm so unskillful on the phone. “Wow,” I managed to say.

“Here's what will happen now. Make the revisions, don't overthink it. Today or tomorrow, get it done. I'll send it to the Committee, and then to the Graduate School for the final review.”

“Okay,” I said.

“After that, I'll schedule some blocks of time for your oral defense, about two weeks out. You need to send me your PowerPoint 10 days before the day.”

“Uh, okay,” I said.

“Download the proctor form and notify your proctor.”

“Whoa,” I said.

“You're ready. You did a fantastic job. You are a fantastic scholar. We need to keep in touch.”

I managed to thank her. We signed off. I hung up the phone and looked at my cat, reclining on his chair next to me. He opened one eye and looked at me.

“I'm almost done,” I told him. He looked skeptical, stretched, and closed his eye. I wish I could be that cool.

The chronic malcontent twiddles and frets

Today I checked the university course room (as I have been doing at least twice a day for the past 10 days) and found an email from my Chair. She said she has feedback on my dissertation manuscript from the reviewers at the Graduate School. “Not many changes at all,” is how she described it. That sounds promising. Only one problem. The university has failed to set up my next course, a situation that has not occurred in the eight years I've been allowing them to siphon my discretionary income from my bank account. (I suspect it is because I'm technically at the end of my program, no more time on the clock.) So right now I'm not enrolled in any course. Which means the Chair can't upload the feedback. No place to upload to, apparently. She can't just email it to me? Nope. I sent an email to my adviser. Maybe in a few days, they will figure out that they granted me an extension and decide it's okay to set up a new course.

So, the bad news is, the paper was not approved. The good news is, it sounds like the revisions might not be massively substantial. The bad news is I can't see the feedback until the university enrolls me in the next course. The good news is... I guess I get a few more days of thumb-twiddling.

I've cleaned everything I feel like cleaning. Other than laying around watching rom coms and eating bon bons, there's not much to do except fret over how long my savings will last. With the fear monkeys on my back, I've felt inspired to gingerly poke my toe back into my self-employment adventure. I forget what I was working on, though: it's been three months, my brain is a sieve, and information is water. I have a jumbled to-do list, and every time I try to sneak up on an item—update PayPal account, for example—I find myself sitting at my kitchen table drinking coffee and reading vampire romance novels under the soothing glare of my new shop light.

I'm sneaking up on my to-do list while I wait to revise my dissertation. I'm starting slowly, with the easier stuff. For instance, I redesigned my personal website. One Wordpress page, displaying a photo of me, plus a terse explanation of who I am and what I do. That sounds so simple, doesn't it. Not. It's hard to write about oneself. I'd rather write about you. Who are you, by the way?

I also peered (through my fingers) at my two business websites, afraid for some reason that they stop functioning when my attention is elsewhere. I saw some formatting problems (I need to update my themes). Mostly I lack of content. There's a reason for that. It's because I don't know what I'm marketing to whom. It's hard to write spot-on content when you don't know your audience. Lack of clarity leads to ambiguous messages. Sigh.

On top of all that, I find I have forgotten how to do technical things I don't do very often, like uploading files to the server in the sky. How do I...? Oh yeah, I have this little ftp program, I remember now. But what's my password? Where do I upload the...? Oh, nuts. I don't want to admit that I understand why my mother has opted out of the modern technological age. At 84, she regresses a bit more every year. She gave up email and then the internet. Soon I fear she will give up her computer all together. Too expensive, too much trouble. Next to go will be her (nonsmart) cell phone. Back to rotary phones, coffee percolators, black and white TVs, letters written on paper and sent through the postal system, and—dare I say it?—face-to-face conversations, replete with body language, cigarette smoke, farts, halitosis, and hugs. Yikes!

Climbing the mountain, but slowly, slowly

I'm back in waiting mode, waiting for the Graduate School to give a thumbs up/thumbs down on my dissertation (first draft). If I'm lucky, and if all the planets align, and if (contrary to some reports) there is a god, then the draft will be approved with minimal revisions. Then I'll sail on into the oral defense and graduate to the next adventure (self-unemployment, I guess you could call it). But if I'm not lucky and the planets do not align (how would I know?), and there is no god (as most days I suspect), then there will be ten gajillion revisions, from missing words to lack of logic, and I'll have to dive back into the swamp.

Well, maybe swamp is too strong a word. It's really pretty fun to write a research report, and I think I'm pretty good at it. But I'm sort of sick of this one, know what I mean? It's been years in the developing, months in the making, and at times it seems like it will never end. Lately, though, it is starting to seem like I might actually finish. I don't want to count my chickens before they tear my lips off. And it can't go on indefinitely: I do have a deadline. But every hurdle (and there have been many) has melted away—not without effort on my part, but it seems to prove the old adage that persistence wins the race. Or as Kobayashi Issa once said (who?), “O snail, Climb Mount Fuji, But slowly, slowly!”

Meanwhile, the Pacific Northwest is enjoying phenomenal weather, and I have time to enjoy it. Days on end of glorious sunshine, some early morning fog, but mostly delicious sunshine until the shadows lengthen (too soon!). Our local Mount Fuji (Mt. Hood) is covered with a pristine layer of fresh powder. Not deep, though. After the wettest September on record, we have had only five days in October with measurable precipitation. Wack! Our average rainfall for October is 3 inches. We are at 0.84 inches now, but I don't hear anyone complaining. Well, maybe those fish that got left flopping high and dry after the State of Oregon decided to hold back some water in the Wickiup Reservoir for next year's growing season. Oops. Too bad fish can't unionize.

Dare I say it, maybe I have become a half-hearted believer in the... what would I call it? The rhythm of life? I won't go so far as to say that god has a plan—that's a little too woowoo for me—and I don't know how to fit massive fish kills into the overall scheme, but in my tiny snail-like existence, the timing of certain events certainly has seemed charmed at times. I'm thinking specifically of my getting laid off after almost ten years with the career college, at the almost-precise time when I needed every moment to work on my dissertation. Would I have had the courage to quit that job? Probably not: Unemployment is one of my great terrors. Clearly, this was a case of the universe doing for me what I could not do for myself. If I hadn't been laid off, I doubt the president of that college would have felt compelled by guilt to give me permission to interview my former colleagues about a sensitive topic like academic quality (of which they have little, my opinion). If I hadn't been laid off, I wouldn't have been able to complete my data collection. I'd still be flogging the bushes for suitable and willing candidates! 

If I really let myself believe that life has a rhythm and a flow, what would that be like, I wonder? Would I be more serene? Would I have more trust in the process? Would I complain less and smile more? Of course, being the chronic malcontent, my next thought is, be careful what you wish for. When the rains come, as they inevitably will, for this is Oregon, after all—when the rains come, and the east wind howls, and full daylight (let alone sunlight) is a distant memory, and my fledgling start-up is wilting from lack of income, then I might find myself cursing the timing of the universe. While I morosely peruse the want ads. 

Well, wreckage of the future and all that hoo hah... In the meantime, I'm soaking up the sun.

Take a deep breath, be here now, eat some pie

On Tuesday afternoon I received a list of revisions from my Chairperson, eleven items, some very small, some on the substantive side. Eleven items. I took a deep breath and pulled up my big girl panties, dug in, hunkered down, and bulled my way through that list. I didn't leave the Love Shack for three days (except once to take out the stinking pail of compost. And I refilled the bird seed buffet in the back yard.) I did eat and sleep. I'm not crazy. I did bathe once, I think. And in the evening, when my eyes were crossed and I couldn't see to type, I stopped and zoned out in front of the television until bedtime. So, it's not like I spent the entire 72 hours writing. But it smells like it.

Yesterday was Friday, the sprint to the finish line. I crossed every t, I dotted the i's and j's and anything else that looked better with a dot over it. And when it was as polished and shiny as I could make it, I launched the 380-page monster up to the cyber course room. My hands started shaking as I checked to make sure the document had arrived intact. I sent along with it an explanation of how I had addressed the eleven comments.

After I uploaded the file, I noticed she had sent an email saying essentially, Don't spend a lot of time fixing this thing, let's just get it done. I appreciated that sentiment. However, one of the eleven items was a request to change present tense to past tense in Chapters 4 and 5, which took a long time. I'm sure I missed some verbs, and some could go either way, but I combed through the monster, line and line, changing is to was about twenty billion times, until I got to the end. Well, not that many: I exaggerate. If you make it all the way through spellcheck, Word will give you a report of the grammar check: number of characters, words (93,939), sentences (4,986), and paragraphs (2,802), reading level (grade 13), and percentage of passive tense (13%, which is not bad for an academic scholarly document). I had to put myself in this document: You can't avoid saying I when you are the data collection method (interviewer), interacting with the data sources (human subjects). It always feels so stilted to read The researcher collected the data instead of I collected the data. Don't you think? Let's practice being here now, people.

This morning I checked the course room and found an email from my Chair. She reported that she had sent the manuscript to the Graduate School for review. And she added, Take a rest, you deserve it. Fantastic work! Exclamation point. She uses the word fantastic frequently, so I don't read much into it, but still it's nice to hear. I think I am turning into one of her successes: I don't complain, I do my best, and I get it done.

So now it's waiting time again. Up one more step on the increasingly shaky ladder toward the pie in the sky. But I'm starting to sense that this 8-year journey will soon be over. I have evidence: The Chair sent me instructions to prepare for the oral defense.

There's a moment in every one of my favorite rom com movies where the hero finally bows to the inevitable. When running from love, success, creativity, whatever, no longer works. When the hero has to turn away from the past toward an uncertain future and engage fully with the nemesis he/she has been trying unsuccessfully to avoid for 80 minutes. The tone of the music changes from confrontational to wistfully bittersweet, sort of poignant, as the hero realizes that to reach for a new identity means giving up an old identity, one that might have been comfortable and familiar, but now seems increasingly small and confining. It's a leap of faith. As the saying goes, it takes courage to live life.

So, I'm living life, letting go of an old identity to reach for something new and bigger. Probably when I get it, whatever it is, it won't be quite what I expected, but what pie in the sky goal ever tasted like anything you've tasted before?

De-cluttering the chronic malcontent

My apartment, which a former friend once sarcastically named the Love Shack, has one closet, and it is in the bedroom, just inside the door. I would say it is a smallish closet, based on my 50+ years of experience with closets. Not big enough for a Murphy bed, anyway. It's about six feet long, just over two feet deep, with a clothes rod at eye-level, and it has two shelves above the clothes rod. I can just barely reach a box or basket on the top shelf. It has a regular-sized door, not a sliding door, which limits the width of things that can be stored. So, it isn't exactly a huge closet. A normal size person could lay down on the floor and take up all the space.

Still, it's amazing how much crap I have managed to store in that small space. In anticipation of the ARC truck driveby scheduled for next week, I decided to declutter the Love Shack. I feared it would be futile, since most of the clutter consists of books, and I'm not ready to part with my books. However, I tried. I worked my way from room to room, seeking trash that could become another man's treasure, and eventually ended up in the bedroom closet.

A couple days ago, my Chair sent a message to all her hapless victims, oops, I mean, all her students, letting us know she is unexpectedly out of the office until Monday. Maybe it's a ploy to buy more time to review my massive dissertation. Maybe she's got some job interviews lined up. Maybe she has moved to Florida. No, wait, she already lives in Florida. Well, who knows? I hope she is okay. In the meantime, I am trying not to dwell on the millions of problems I expect she and the committee will find with my dissertation. I am trying not to think about time passing, tick tock. Instead, I continue my housecleaning blitz.

I took all the clothes off the clothes rod and piled them on my bed. Some of the garments are wrapped in old crinkly clear plastic cleaner bags. The cat immediately freaked and ran, I assumed to hunker down under the couch. He hates the crinkly sound of plastic bags.

Once the clothes were out, I could see the closet much better. Most of the floor was occupied by a small shop vac, purchased from Sears about 12 years ago, rarely used because of its unbearably loud roar. I think I've vacuumed my car with it twice, assisted by a two-mile long extension cord running from my back door to the gravel parking lot where I park my car. Twice. In 12 years. What would my life be without a shop vac, I wondered? Poorer, maybe, if I had any desire to vacuum my floor mats. But after a minute of contemplation, I realized I'd trade the prospect of toothpick-free floor mats for some empty floor space in my closet in a heartbeat. I packed up the accessories, found the owner's manual, stuffed it all inside the belly of the little beast and taped it shut. I rolled the machine out to the front door and parked it next to two paper shopping bags standing ready to accumulate other castoff clutter. Take my vac—please!

Next I tackled the shelves. Some festively colored plastic baskets held a variety of junk I hadn't looked at in years, judging by the pristine layer of dust coating everything. I dug under the dust and found things I have no memory of buying: shower curtain liners (two unopened packages! I only have one shower, and I never use it!), plus three unopened packages of suction cups with little hooks attached. Wha—? Maybe I was planning on covering the hideous beige Formica shower stall? I can't remember, but it sounds like something I might have done about ten years ago when I first moved into the Love Shack. When the walls were bare, when there were no cat seats or curtains or furniture, other than a refrigerator and a stove, and I don't think those really count as furniture, do they?

I put the curtains and the hooks in the ARC bag and went digging for more junk. Hmmm, lots of electrical stuff, odds and ends. An unopened kit to hang a swag lamp. I obviously didn't know I had that in the closet, since a couple years ago I purchased a kit from IKEA and installed it over my desk area. It's got one of those balloon-shaped white paper shades on it. One swag is all I have room for, so in the bag goes the old swag kit (much better quality than the IKEA version, I might add, but oh well). What else? Let's see. A glass-less, cardboard-less black and gilt picture frame, no doubt a gift that used to hold some certificate or other that someone at my former job thought I would be proud to receive. Probably a certificate testifying to the fact that I am qualified to teach keyboarding. Was qualified. My teaching skills are rusty after almost six months of non-use.

But wait, there's more: An electric socket kit; a black nylon zipfront jacket I bought to wear to the freezing cold gym and then dropped my membership but kept the jacket and never wore it once (too tight!); an electric alarm clock (two alarms but no radio, replaced several years ago by a similar alarm clock, with two alarms and a radio); a black shirt with too-short sleeves, made of 1970s Indian cotton gauze, the sort of fabric that looks like a wrinkled mess even after you iron it; an unopened spool of speaker wire; a 2-foot under-cabinet fluorescent light; and a cheesy backpack, the kind you get when you donate to the Sierra Club.

What else is in the closet? A box of paint cans. A wooden easel. My huge brown leather portfolio, with it's broken handle and carefully incised etching of a leaping naked man (Hermes, I think), and which contains all the illustrations I made when I was in my fashion illustrator phase, circa 1979. I have no idea what to do with all that stuff. No one could possibly want it, but I can't bear to throw it all away. And at the back of the closet, wrapped in a dingy off-white flannel blanket and wrapped with bone-dry masking tape: probably the most valuable thing I own, to me anyway. The painting that inspired me to become a painter.

It's a landscape, about 26" x 32", of some dark clumps of autumn trees separated by a slow-moving river, which reflects a lowering sunset. The paint is thick, the style impressionist. There might have once been an artist's name inscribed in the lower right corner, but if there was, it is unintelligible now. The back of the painting is covered in very old paper, which is cracked and peeling. A bit of cardboard peeps through, but there is nothing written that I can see. I'm tempted to peel up the paper, to see if there might be a clue.

The painting has been in my closet since my mother sold the house where my father died and moved to her condo. That was what, 2005? She didn't want the painting, or more accurately, she knew I did. She's in jettisoning mode, too. I think that is what happens to some people when they get old: They start giving stuff away, in preparation for their departure. Me, I just want to recycle some of my clutter. But not this painting. Someday I will have it appraised and if I can afford it, I will have the years of cigar and cigarette smoke carefully removed from its surface. Maybe someday I will be privileged to see what it looked like when the unknown artist first painted it.

I hung it up on my wall, half over one of my own paintings. It's nothing like my paintings, and yet, this dark landscape is encoded in my artistic DNA. I don't know why I didn't hang it up sooner. Probably for the same reason I never knew I had a swag lamp kit, two shower curtain liners, and 24 suction cup hooks. The Bermuda Triangle of closets.

The last task was to sort through all the clothes on the bed. I found myself wondering what the Style Makeover guys would have to say if they saw my wardrobe. Almost all my clothes came from Goodwill or Value Village. Mostly I am talking about jackets and flannel shirts. They all have that musty, dragged in the mud, then washed in cold water look to them. A few things stand out: the men's cashmere coat I found at Goodwill for $20 (warm! disintegrating!); a periwinkle blue linen suit I made back in the late 1980s, when I could still see well enough to sew, when I used to sew for a living (another story); and my black polyester bachelor's graduation robe, which I wore twice a year for almost ten years to my former employer's graduation ceremonies, along with the un-hoodlike hood and the flat mortarboard cap. Should I keep it? I couldn't decide, so I kept it. If nothing else, it could make a good Halloween costume.

The chronic malcontent feng shuies the crap out of the Love Shack

The umpteenth time I checked the course room today, there was a message from my Chair: “Unexpectedly out of office. Back Monday.” After a stab of disappointment, I felt oddly relieved. For the rest of this week, I don't have to fret about receiving feedback on my dissertation submission. I mean, I can fret if I want to, but even I am able to recognize the futility of fretting. So I did what any self-respecting adult would do when faced with an unexpected delay: I feng shuied the Love Shack.

I mean no disrespect, and I'm sorry if I offend you, but it's the perfect time to take my housecleaning one step further. I've vacuumed, I've dusted (in places), I've washed the curtains (you know that is a big deal if I keep mentioning it in post after post). I started really looking at the amount of crap I have on my shelves (and I have a lot of shelves)... I mean, really looking. Wow, there's a Microsoft Office 97 book. Really? PowerPoint 2002? Two copies! Who knew!

One thing led to another and the next thing I know, I'm looking up feng shui on the Internet. Score! I found the Bagua, that diagram that divides a space into nine zones. I sketched out a floor plan. Wait, should I make my back door the entrance wall or my front door the entrance wall? Hmmm.

While I was pondering this mystical question, someone pounded on my front door. I froze. Curiosity almost made me go move the curtain to see who was there. But I held very still, like a rabbit in a burrow, and whoever was there went away. People who know me know to come to my back door. The only time I open my front door is to collect my mail. Okay, that answers my question. The back door is the entrance wall.

I returned to my diagram. Darn, it's not to scale. Oh well, close enough to find out what my feng shui condition is. Uh-oh. Looks like Zone 4, Wealth, is in the empty space by the front door. That's not good, is it? Maybe if I switch the diagram and let the front door be... oh, no, that's even worse. Now Wealth is in the bathroom! I'm flushing my prosperity down the drain! I knew it! I switched my perspective back to the back door as the entrance wall. Maybe I can put a money tree by the front door or something. Or a mobile made of Monopoly money.

My analog TV, converter box, antenna, and old-fashioned DVD/VHS player circa 2005 sits in Zone 9, the Reputation sector. This zone also contains the cat tree, a wondrously shaky multilevel contraption I built myself. Wonder what that has to do with Reputation?

Love and Marriage (Zone 2) is in the bedroom. I guess that isn't so bad, except I've been happily single for 10 years. Maybe this refers to my cat. He's sacked out on the bed right now. We're like an old married couple, mostly. He sleeps a lot, farts occasionally, and I do all the work. Yep, sounds about right.

Health and Family (Zone 3) is occupied by a long stretch of heavily laden lime green bookshelves. I wonder what that means. Maybe it means I will get a good workout if I get rid of some of these books. And whatever is left will go to my relatives when I die? I fail to see how that is helpful.

Uh-oh. Creativity is in my bedroom closet. I guess that explains a few things. What goes in the Center? Some of the Bagua maps put Health in the middle, some just say Earth. Get it straight, you feng shuists. Hey, the center is where I sit right now, typing this post and trying to figure out what the center is all about. Oh, man, this is getting too meta.

Zone 8, Knowledge, is where the cat food sits. Career, Zone 1, is where the back door opens. There's nothing there except a fire extinguisher and an umbrella (not to be used together, I don't think). The last zone is Zone 6, Helpful People and Travel. And that is in the bathroom. Well, the bathroom has to go somewhere. It's better to put Helpful People in the bathroom than Wealth, right?

I don't know what it all means, but I'm pretty sure my feng shui score is crap. No wonder my life is shite! I need to boost my feng shui rating. Okay, what should I do? Going to the Internet again... okay, according to one site, in my living room, I need to have family photos (check), harmonious colors (check), and a comfortable chair for every family member (check). The cat has an abundance of comfy places; in fact, the whole damn house is decorated for his pleasure. Seriously. I don't even take showers so I don't have to move his favorite window seat in the bathroom. Uh-oh, the feng shui tips say to hide my TV and electronics. Then how would I watch Scandal and Once Upon a Time? Nope, the TV stays put.

The tips for the bedroom warn us not to have photos or religious icons “watching” us while we sleep. I don't know why not, I don't do anything interesting while I sleep, do you? Avoid cluttered views. Oh dear. The walls in my bedroom are covered with shelves, no lie. Books, tools, sewing crap, clutter. And yes, the closet door is open and you can see piles of laundry and mismatched, outdated, thrift store clothes hanging on wire hangers (I know, I know). Let's see, what else am I doing wrong? Don't put your bed under the window. Nuts. Well, it's only the Love and Marriage zone, who cares? Not me.

I'm more concerned with the Wealth zone. Let's see. I need to correct the subliminal messages in my home that are detracting from abundance. And I need to start a gratitude journal. Really? Argh. And I need to stop feeling and acting needy. Ahhhh. I knew it! It's all my fault! If I just weren't so damn needy, everything would be hunky-dory! Abundance and prosperity would easily and effortlessly flow to me and through me... if I weren't such a greedy, grasping self-centered loser!

Okay, I've had enough of this feng shui shite. I don't need my furniture and accessories berating me for my bad attitude. I'll just get one of those laughing buddhas or something. Wait, is that a different religion? Is feng shui a religion? Now I've probably offended the feng shui gods. Oh man. Let me hunker down in Zone 6 (the bathroom) and wait for some helpful person to come along and rescue me. I'm so screwed.